Books I love

A true classic and must-read for UX beginners. In 13 chapters, Steve Krug leads through his guiding usability principles and gives hands-on advice for the most common challenges in web and mobile interface design. I found this mix especially helpful to have a list of rules to hand, but also to get an idea of how each principle might look like implemented in the real world. And finally you learn why user research doesn't need to be expensive.

Developer Kathy Sierra explains why companies should care about the results users achieve by using their products and how they can help users become experts. A truly user-focused marketing and design approach. I recommend this book for people interested in psychological concepts behind product development like learning, motivation and appreciation.

In their bestselling book, the two MIT professors show that we find ourselves in a technology-driven revolution. By referring to both practical examples and academic research, they explore the consequences of exponential progress in technology. This book made me see daily tech news within a larger context and understand relation and impact between technology, economy and society.

Where should we place thumb-friendly controls? Do we still need buttons if we're able to manipulate information directly? What can we learn from using physical products when we integrate gestures? This book is full of exciting questions, reasoned answers and illustrating examples that helped me to understand how the touchscreen's physical property creates new challenges for user interface design.

If you enjoy watching Mike Monteiro frankly speaking about how the design world really works – this is just one example – you will love his honest lessons and anecdotes he collected in this book. They gave me useful answers for my first client project as well as new perspectives on fields beyond design, such as building confidence, communicating with others and guiding projects.

Gothelf’s book appeared to me as a summary of all good blogposts about product and UX design I had read so far. This makes his book an essential piece in every designer’s library. The most useful suggestions I took away from this book: Declare your assumptions, work towards outcomes rather than outputs, and establish a “test everything” culture.

Nir Eyal’s hook model offers a human-centered approach to product challenges like adoption and retention: By studying people’s routines and motivations, we are able to build products that complement those instead of adding new tasks to users’ packed lives. What I learned from that: Know your users’ schedule, protect their freedom, and ask why until you’ve discovered their true underlying motivations.

Erika Hall offered a short but complete perspective on design research and brought forgotten methods back to my mind, like SWOT analysis and brand audit I used during my marketing studies. I found the chapter ‘Analysis and Models’ particularly useful for my work: Here she explains step by step how to translate observations into insights and design actions.

Pioneered by Clayton Christensen and Anthony Ulwick, Intercom took the jobs-to-be-done approach, adapted it to digital product design and wrote about their findings on their excellent blog. People who regularly read their blog won’t find something completely new, but all the knowledge in form of a short, comprehensive eBook. And it’s free!